Medical lighting
Innovative lighting solutions for medical applications. Advanced light technologies tailored to the needs of medical applications in illumination, treatments and therapies.
Illumination
Typical sub-applications in that area are lighting solutions for surgery / emergency rooms, dermatologists, dentists, veterinary or even right fit room lighting in hospitals and at doctors. Critical application requirements which must be fulfilled for e.g. surgical or dermatologist’s lights, because of lighting standards, are
- high central illuminance for each zone and high uniformity
- color rendering index CRI (average) Ra > 85 (appropriate for tissue differentiation); or surgical lighting, R9 index (color of blood) and R13 (color of muscle) must be high.
- color temperature (CCT): 3000K to 6700K.
Often these requirements are extended by individual end-user preferences such as
- pure white light at highest correlated color temperature (CCT) values with Ra / R9 > 90 K.
- Red balance control, which allows surgeons to ‘ tune’ the red content to match their own vision and to prevent symptoms of fatigue
- Minimal heat development at high intensity as those lights are typical close to patients and medical staff
- Highest spectral stability and reliability with lifetime > 50,000 hours
Latest innovations for lighting solutions in surgery rooms or at dentists often see integrated functional extension by advanced sensing capabilities for proximity and auto-focus control, shading detection or avoidance or even integrated image sensing for documentation purposes or on-screen diagnostic support.
But even for standard room lighting in hospitals it is desired to have matching spectrum with color rendering index (CRI) above 90: right fit spectrum helps medical staff to detect e.g. Cyanosis - an effect of skin turning blue-ish due to lack of oxygen - and react the minutes earlier before it becomes a life-threatening issue.
Light based therapies or treatments
Light therapies, also known as phototherapy or bright light therapy, utilizesutilize controlled wavelengths of direct sunlight or artificial light to treat various medical conditions. These include therapies for neonatal jaundice where light in the range of 400nm to 520nm - with an absorption peak at 458nm - is able to break down bilirubin by making it water soluble. Others focus on seasonal affective disorders (SAD), sleep-wake rhythm disorders, skin conditions, and even cancer. For skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, acne vulgaris, and neurodermatitis, treatment with ultraviolet light is referred to as ultraviolet light therapy. Light therapy can also address vitamin D deficiency and promote wound healing. The technical realization is based on spectrally stable LEDs, nowadays often combined with spectral sensors to enable fine-tuned spectral dose control instead of time-based exposure measurements.
Finally medical light enables treatments for material hardening with UV-A LED light as known from dentist, efficient disinfection using UV-C LED light or even automatic shape / object scanning for orthopedic or tooth repair solutions, where Lidar-like scans are being performed with single mode green or blue laser light.
We offer a market leading one-stop-shop portfolio of LEDs with high CRI value, including Ra, R9, R13 (up to 97), high CCT value (up to 4500) and high lumen output, robustness, reliability, spectral stability, lifetime and low thermal resistance. Our laser portfolio, especially for our edge-emitting lasers (EEL) supports a broad range of selected peak wavelength. Our differentiation is a proven track record in batch-to-batch volume production where we achieve highest wafer homogeneity and tightest wavelength tolerance of only ±1-2nm. The light emitting products are being complemented by the matching photodetectors and integrated sensors covering a spectral range from ~260 to 1100nm, available as broadband or tailored bandpass devices.